This year’s 30 nominees are a celebration of some of the best contemporary photography. But whose work deserves to win?

Selected from 2,377 submissions from 92 countries, spanning six categories – Portraiture, Landscape, Architecture, Photojournalism, Conceptual and Best Emerging Photographer – this year’s thirty nominees are a celebration of some of the best contemporary photography the world has to offer. But whose work deserves to win?

This is your chance to have your say. The FSPA judges will be announcing their category and grand prize winners at the FSPA Awards ceremony in Osnabrück, Germany on 14 October. We are giving you the chance to choose your favourite nominee in each category, for a special People’s Choice Award which will be announced alongside the judges’ selections.

How to vote

In the coming days, we will be showcasing the entries from the five finalists in each category. To vote for your favourite photographer in the Landscape Category, visit the Facebook gallery and like your favourite images from each photographer’s series. You can like as many or as few of the images as you want.

Find out more about each photographer’s project below:

‘Mare Mostrum’ by Marco Valle

“The sea and beaches are a symbol of the Italian identity. With its 7000 kilometers of coastline, Italy represents the heart of the Mediterranean and it is visited each year by thousands of tourists. This delicate ecosystem is slowly being replaced by an increasing overbuild; new industrial areas, second homes and beach facilities are privatising a great amount of land that should belong to the community.

According to the Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, since the mid-80s 220 kilometers of coast have disappeared at the rate of about 8 kilometers per year. Meter by meter, beaches, dunes and cliffs have all been lost and replaced by, many times, unfinished structures and degradation. The analysis conducted by Italian NGOs, and various infringement procedures against Italy by the EU, show that many popular beaches are polluted by raw sewage. It means faeces and other organic substances end up into the seas where families and kids spend their summer holidays.”

‘Seascapes’ by Peter Franck

“The pictures shown tell stories of the sea. They show nature; nature seen through the eyeglasses of our cultural history. They show temporal jumps and the continuing visual validity of the seascapes. The story of a landscape that was always there, and became a landscape of stories and histories through the actions and shaping influences of man.

The aim of these images is to illustrate their fragility and the duty to protect them. The tranquillity of the sea may be disturbed by the passage of a ship, a ghost ship with countless stories on board. Elsewhere, the sun appears to draw a line through the heavens. The landscape becomes a stage on which our existence itself is enacted. What remains is nature.”

‘Dutch Landscape’ by Saskia Boelsums

“As an artist and photographer from the Netherlands, I feel strongly connected with the traditional Dutch landscape painters. At the same time, that strong connection with history confronts me with the near future.

The beauty I try to capture in my pictures is excessive and threatening. Cloud formations are dramatic and the weather becomes extreme with unexpected peaks. It seems the classic historical Dutch landscapes are being replaced by landscapes and clouds arising from climate change. I am very aware of these developments and changes. That is what my photos show; the threatening beauty inspired by the great Dutch landscape painters.”

‘The White Contamination’ by Florian Ruiz

“In the snowy landscapes of the heights of Fukushima, I have captured the invisible pain of radiation. Inspired by the Japanese engravings, I hoped to capture the ever-shifting perceptions of nature where radiation accumulates the most.

With a Geiger counter, I measured the radioactive contamination’s presence in becquerels (Bq), a unit that expresses atom disintegration and its mutation’s number per second. By a process of staggered superimpression, I intended to show the atom’s alteration in my pictures. The transparency effects and the broken perspectives give rise to a shape that is in motion, an impermanent world as in traditional Japanese engravings.

Then, I created a vibration; a departure from the reality of the subject that reveals the presence of radiation in the image. The process reinvents and twists the very landscape, leading to a sort of vertigo or malaise, a danger hidden behind the purity of the white of the landscapes.”

‘Geometry of Urbanisation’ by Eduard Korniyenko

“Humanity has won the competition of species which inhabit the Earth. It has since intruded in the most remote places of our planet: gasification, electrification, development – all these activities leave our footprint on the Earth’s body.

During my trip to Dagestan in May 2016, I was constantly observing how our humanity conquers the environment, taking the land over meter by meter. We master nature with our technologies. Sometimes it does not harm and looks perfect in composition. It became a great inspiration for the photographs I took during that trip.”

Be part of this year’s judging and vote for your favourite to receive the People’s Choice Award at this year’s awards ceremony for the Felix Schoeller Photo Award. Visit the Facebook gallery to vote.

Sponsored by Felix Schoeller Group: This feature was made possible with the support of Felix Schoeller Group, a world leader in photographic paper since 1895. Please click here for more information on sponsored content funding at British Journal of Photography.